


Sanctuary

by callmeflo



Series: Brittle Bones [1]
Category: Those Who Went Missing
Genre: Gen, Wellsprings Prompt, warning for sad esk :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23005147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeflo/pseuds/callmeflo
Summary: Fell has nothing to give.
Series: Brittle Bones [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653349





	Sanctuary

The forest is filled with **ghosts** , and sometimes Fell can’t stand it. They watch him, eyes pleading, yet all he can do is wait for the days to pass - he can’t turn back time to before the deaths, can’t speed up the new growth. The trees that once stood here with their pointed tips tickling heaven’s gates are gone. Their feathered, evergreen needles and dark chocolate, flaking bark litter the ground between the scarred stumps, creating a thin carpet that stretches unevenly over the well trodden mud.

Tracks remain, even now that nearly a year has passed. Deep wounds in the earth, patterned and jagged, criss crossing back and forth where the loud beasts meandered through the trees, uncaring for the mosses, beetles, voles, seedlings that they’d crushed unforgivingly. Between them are the smaller prints of human boots, all identical, barely leaving marks really and they’re **fading** well, but Fell remembers the blood they traipsed across his boundary and the memories don’t wane as easily as the physical reminders.

Four toed prints of moose are rare now, just the odd one from long ago left miraculously untrampled, and a few newer, hesitant, at the edges of the clearing. But why would they come any closer, out of the safety and shelter of the living forest, to stand in this graveyard bare of food? From his perch upon a roughly cut tree stump, beneath a sky as grey as his mood, Fell’s doleful eyes catch a glimpse of massive antlers among the foliage far off before they swing away and disappear back into the dark depths.

All the marks of the past will leave eventually - whether the dirt is pelted by **rain** until the soil is boggy and the divots fill with water, or if the wilful mosses and stubborn grasses finally push through to recolour the dull brown landscape. But it will take months, years -

Abruptly sick, Fell stands and launches himself into the air, dead wooden legs cracking like breaking bones with the movement, and catches the breeze beneath his olive wings. It’s instinctive, the way he drifts from one world to the next, leaving the site of the massacre behind him and flickering into existence within the sanctuary of crystalline walls.

The Conservatory blooms around him. The light is low here but golden, as warm in colour as it is in atmosphere - a stark contrast to the place he calls home. And the light is low because it trickles in gently through the canopy of fresh, lush leaves, greens and oranges and reds of maples and willows and conifers, **vivid** to his stinging black eyes after weeks in the dull misery of his decimated forest. The towering trunks surround him and he feels like he can hide in here forever, slipping between the foliage, small enough to duck through the thickets that fail to catch on his fur and feathers.

This is his favourite place. Created from his memories and dreams, he’d stood on the soft, bare ground that first day and watched the seedlings become saplings become monstrous trees, fully grown within minutes in a way he fervently wished his boundary could copy. Months later he finds himself retreating here ever more regularly, to hide from the despairing creatures whose habitats are in ruins, from the demands and games of his possessive creator, from the swirling black clouds that herald oncoming storms that he has no shelter from…

In this boreal forest, where each delicate twig is brimming with a special kind of magic, untameable, imperceivable, immortal, he is safe and free and willingly lost. On a wispy branch bookended by rusty blackbirds, no one will spot him.

If his beloved home didn’t need him, he would remain here forever.

Nestled in the tufts of larch needles with his long tail drooping down below and wings tucked close, he watches as the blackbirds squabble over berries and fuss with the tangled beginnings of a nest. There’s a soft breeze coming from nowhere, or perhaps the tail end of another esk’s gale elemental, which ruffles their patchy black-brown feathers and has their tails splaying out to catch their balance. 

Fell turns his head away to check his surroundings, a habit engrained from his very first breath. It’s more lively here than usual, with the nattering of various animals - which all must be familiars of other spirits, as nothing living can reach this plane - and their esk of various shapes, colours, and sizes wandering alongside them. The little abnormal doesn’t mind sharing his area of forest, especially if no one bothers him, but the abundance of visitors is suspect, and he worries.

His wingspan is just a touch over fifteen inches and he uses it to glide smoothly from his high perch, drifting along the light draught with only the occasional flutter. He’s soon joined by the merle, twenty or thirty strong as they twist about the trees, and, though he stands out amongst them with his green colouring, not a single esk below seems to notice him.

The other beings quieten down the further they go, conversation petering out, and even Fell’s blackbirds stop their twittering. It’s an inherent reaction that he thinks must be a part of their very souls, as if they know the Temple of Silence like their own tail. It’s revealed piece by piece - an outcropping of crumbled, patterned stone covered liberally in moss; a peaceful haze that relaxes his muscles; an archway he almost misses behind its draped curtain of ivy; a silent vibration that doesn’t quite hum, settling into his fur with soothing touches; and finally a tall, elegant statue of an ambiguous esk, its details worn with age and spotted with fungi.

The statue’s paws hold an ornate urn to its chest, tipped enough that pearlescent water can spill from its edge and into the well below. Fell swoops closer and lands on the rim, his wooden toes tickled by the never ending flow of liquid, and he watches sedately as a knot of bioluminescent moss detaches from his wrist and glides away on the current.

This close to the surface, he can smell the **scent** radiating from the spring: it’s sweet like the berries his rusty blackbirds favour but can no longer find back home - it’s memories, reminiscence, remembrance. Each ripple seems to send another wave of the fragrance swirling up to his roost, and with it comes a strength he hadn’t realised he lacked.

The Wellsprings take and give in turn. Fell, with his boundary butchered to the muddy ground, so young still and yet to experience growth, has nothing to give. But the crowd of esk around him do, and none notice or care that he and his birds stay, each basking in the magic’s warm embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> ghost + rain + scent + faded + vivid
> 
> Base Score: 22 AP (Writing: 1129 words)  
> +20 AP (Conservatory Bonus)  
> +1 AP (Small Familiar/Swarm: 1 AP * 1)  
> +5 AP (Personal Work Bonus)  
> +8 AP (Storyteller Bonus: 8 AP * 1)  
> Total AP per submission: 56
> 
> Base Score: 11 GP (Writing: 1129 words)  
> +5 GP (Conservatory Bonus)  
> +1 GP (Small Familiar/Swarm: 1 GP * 1)  
> +6 GP (Storyteller Bonus: 6 GP * 1)  
> Total GP per submission: 23


End file.
